Geek/Writer Rambles Ignorantly About Shit

Pulp Speed and Why You Should Never Trust Me

Wow, I feel like I just came up with the title for a new anime series.

So I recently heard (uh, read) about this thing called Pulp Speed. You want the long of it? Here. Short of it? It’s basically just a daily writing goal old school writers met which ranged from 2750 words to 5500 words a day. Absurd right? And I just made a pledge on trying for at least 25 minutes a day (so like, 500 words a day). Those writing goals these Pulp Writers had meant they could write between 1M to 2M words per year. That’s like 10 novels a year. Or back then, since they had much lower novel word counts. Like 20-30. If your name is George R.R. Martin or Steven Erikson, more like 3 novels a year.

Thing is, it’s definitely possible. Just look at everyone killing NaNoWriMo each year. I’d love to try it. That would mean going back on my pledge which brings in the “Why You Should Never Trust Me” part. I think my biggest reluctance to do it is – alright, you finished the book. You’ve edited it to presentability (woo new made up word). What now? You can’t just publish it because we both know your eyes aren’t the best self-critic. You have to pay an editor and with what money are you going to do that? The other option, try to send that to an agent (can you imagine having 10 novels circulating the agent rounds year round). The issue with that is, apparently contracts nowadays are pretty fucking awful.

Maybe that’s my issue. I’m too concerned with what’ll happen when I’m done the novel instead of actually finishing it, you know? I keep trying to convince myself to deal with that later and that’s what I’ll keep doing.

So back on the topic at hand, Pulp Speed, eh? 1M words in a year. I’m not going to claim I can achieve it. 2750 words a day is a lot of dedication. And when you’ve got University and Work to take into consideration, it’s a lot harder to do. Still, the whole point of this is that if it works, University and Work become non-factors right? So let’s try it.

Yeah, I’m going to scrap my favorite hobbies to focus on writing a fuck ton each day. Eight hours is the goal though fucking what if I’m able to achieve that. I’m known to be pretty inconsistent (see pledge, see me going back to sleep after my 4:30 alarm this morning). But I’ll do it anyways. And these 1M words will mainly count as 1M words of newly written fiction. As far as this blog is concerned I’m already behind on 87020 words so yeah, the odds of success are already against us. I’ve basically got to hit 3003 words (basically but really I used a calc, shits accurate down to the unit) every day as of tomorrow.

But hey, it’s not like I don’t bring up a new ambitious task that there’s little-to-no chance of me achieving ever day. Right?